For now, the United States needs to give up on trying to make Beijing play by the rules of a fair and open economic order, whether by browbeating it with tariffs or enticing it with new trade agreements. Instead, the thrust of U.S. policy should be sharper and narrower: weakening Beijing’s relative technological capabilities. That’s the path to thwarting an authoritarian empire in this era, just as America thwarted a series of authoritarian empires during the twentieth century. The best way of doing this is to forge an informal economic alliance that excludes and outcompetes China.
